The Project Pad

im still trying to get my car running again and now im battling the timing with the trigger wheels. as of right now when i blink out my TDC on cylinder 1 using the timing mark on the bottom end everything looks fine but i aimed the timing light at the cam gear the timing mark is 180 degrees from the TDC mark on the valve cover. im using the ignition locking tool in vemstune and setting it to 1 degree along with my timing light at 1 degree. basically what im trying to figure out is where i have to place my trigger wheel to make the cam and the crank phase proper? what tooth do has to be pointed at the sensor? what tooth has to be at TDC? where does the 2 missing teeth belong? no one out there can seem to explain this. is there a common placement for the 60-2 trigger wheel on the AAN engine that people are using?

You need to read through the vems manual but your answers are all there 40-60* "after tdc angle" is required to correctly calculate advance, beyond that its your call. The camshaft sync should hit after your final trigger tooth but before your missing teeth.

For the purposes of setting this up it might be easier to forget about physical tdc and just look at the sensors in relation to the trigger wheel as that's really all the ecu can calculate.

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*fwiw if you were to set an "after tdc angle" of 60* you could align the hall sensor per factory as they hit 62* btdc in stock guise. Again, all info easily findable in the vems manual.

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i figured it out actually through trial and error. i just unbolted my trigger wheel off my damper pulley and used some of that tacky stuff you find under fenders on old audi's to stick my trigger wheel to the damper. i simply kept turning it till and flashing the cam till my TDC mark on the cam gear lined up with the valve cover. also i put my TDC after trigger at 60 degrees and my distance between zero tooth and the trigger a 0 and kept adjusting the trigger wheel till it lined up like it was supposed to. i also kept the stock firing order as well. so i turns out that my sensor lines up with the 10th tooth from the 2 missing teeth. after that was all done i tried to start it and i had to remove some cranking fuel and such but it runs and roughly might i add.

i now have a problem with cylinder 3 coil not firing. i tested the coil itself and it works i used my LED test light and the ECU gave a very faint blink on the 12V side unlike the rest of the coils that show ground until i hit the test button in vemstune, they all than switch to straight 12V. i traced it the whole way back into my ECU and the wire leading from the ECU to the coil is perfectly fine. i hope marc sees this and is willing to help me a little more because its definately internal in the ECU as to why its not pulsing. thanks for the help man!

replied via PM as well:

your coils are probably active (ttl drive) as opposed to passive (IGBT drive). I think your config is set to use IGN4 as your cylinder 3, the only output that isn't on the stepper. check the ecu to see if there is a driver chip in IGN 4 or not. if there is a driver chip there, it needs to be removed and bridged to run an active coil.

board layout vs IGN channel here:

Saw on s2forum that you got it running but won't Rev past 2300.

Couple things that I would find on my car is that if the sensor was to far away it'd limit revs. Adjust it until you can rev up to your redline. The other thing that was causing me problems was the cam hall sensor. Old ones make all sorts of problems on a vr primary hall secondary setup that isn't on Motronic. I had three different symptoms - die and not restart, crazy ass trigger errors and misfires, and a new rev limit of about 4krpm. Only thing changed on all three occasions was cam position sensor. If you're running it as a secondary make sure it's new.

It's still the original hall sensor on the cam. I'm running hall crank sensor as well. I just pulled my front end back apart to check the trigger wheel because it looks like it's wobbling a little bit plus the wheel that's one there now actually looks a little oval like someone set the VR6 engine it came from on the ground without an oil pan so I plan on pulling another trigger wheel and installing it.

Yeah that could definitely be a problem. VEMS seemed more sensitive than the 034iic ecu that was on my car before - the previous owner had the trigger wheel attached by one tiny little hex screw! It was all loosey goosey! I tacked it on the damper after I had set it perfectly straight and centered. No problems since, just if it was too far away after an engine rebuild.

i took your advice chaloux and went back in and adjusted my sensor and it revs fine now! i also replaced my original trigger wheel with one thats actually round too lol. here's a video of it actually working. My alternator is noisy, its been like that for 2 years but it still charges just fine so i dont mess with it lol.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzptYp120lw[/youtube]

Nice! Finicky little buggers

And do not forget about the damper ? This oscillation leftward and rightward , and ... of the sensor .